


for thee and thine

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Marriage, POV Male Character, Post-Series, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22545154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: Harrion Karstark won't marry unless it's before a weirwood tree in a godswood, but there are no weirwoods south of the Neck.Everyone knows that.
Relationships: Harrion Karstark/Sansa Stark
Comments: 29
Kudos: 216





	for thee and thine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MisMot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisMot/gifts).



> For Mot! :D

There are no true godswoods, below the Neck. So everyone says. 

Harrion could not count himself married unless before a heart tree, and that is why he has made a catalogue of all the available options in this otherwise godsforsaken end of the realm. There are more of them than he thought, but so few are  _ useful.  _ How will the gods hear their prayers through that burned out husk of a weirwood at Raventree Hall?

Twoflower Tyrell has offered Highgarden for their use on his brother’s behalf, because he is an essentially kind man, and because the Tyrells are so very aware that Sansa remembers their abandonment in her hour of need. Their position is precarious under a half-Martell King married to a half-Florent Queen, after all their time spent standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lannisters, and so they seek friends wherever they can. Sansa’s favour they court particularly, perhaps afraid that she will abandon them as they did her.

She does not blame them. Sansa Stark’s capacity for forgiveness shames Harrion constantly, even as he wishes she might be less generous to those who have done her harm. She spent her fury on those who harmed her family, from Littlefinger to the Bastard of Bolton, and now she has only patience, and perhaps pity for those who have not learned from their mistakes. 

When first they met - at court, somehow, not at Winterfell or White Harbour - she had been wary of him, and he had confronted her for the insult he perceived in her reticence. She had laughed at him, and laughed some more in the face of his confusion. She hates nothing so much as artifice, and his complete lack of subtlety or guile must have charmed her or else they would not be here now.

But there are no true godswoods, below the Neck. Everyone says it and so it must be true.

* * *

Except it isn’t true. And he means neither Highgarden’s tangled trio nor Raventree Hall’s grand ruin.

* * *

“You think she will like it?” he asks, stomach twisting with anxiety. Harrion has always been a man driven more by practicality than any other concern, but the immense joy Sansa finds in even the smallest of pleasures has softened him somewhat. Her soft eyes brightened is irresistible, and he thinks that she will love this.

He hopes that she will love it. He hopes that she will at least  _ like  _ it.

“You are insufferable,” Torr Umber says, thumping him hard in the shoulder. Torr still wears the Smalljon’s place as eldest brother uneasily, but he is as good a friend as Harrion has ever known, and he is one of the very few men who do not worry Sansa with their company. “She will love it, as well you know.”

Her sister is with her, and Green Wylla who’s to wed Torr when they return to Last Hearth by way of White Harbour, and Mya the Mule as well. The only woman in the world of whom he’s warier than those three harridans is the Queen, but they love Sansa near as well as he does. Arya might even love her  _ more. _

Harrion knocks. He always does - too many have presumed too much from Sansa, and he will give her every indulgence that is his to grant.

Sansa smiles, and for just a moment Harrion forgets why he is visiting.

“Come sit with me, my love,” she says, patting the empty half of her bench. “You look anxious.”

“He always looks anxious, this side of the Neck,” Torr says, shoving past Harrion to sit obligingly at Wylla’s feet. She begins toying with his hair without looking up from the book in her lap. “Come, Harry, tell your fair lady why you’ve been looking so hard for her.”

“Well,” he says, kicking Torr on his way past and taking Sansa’s hands before he sits. “I may have found us a godswood for our wedding.” 

* * *

The Stark and his entourage are awaiting them at the agreed location. Lord Tully, too, and Lord Arryn’s banners are just visible coming from the north-east. Alys and Sigorn’s banner is flying with those of the Northern lords, and it warms Harrion to see it. He has missed his sister just as much as Sansa has missed her brothers.

“ _ Can  _ we do this?” Arya asks, for the thousandth time. “Is it  _ allowed?” _

“I have never known that to worry you,” Harrion says mildly. He likes Arya very much, and is fairly sure that she likes him - he wouldn’t be alive to marry Sansa if she did not. “Besides, we are of the North. They are our gods. If not us, then who?”

“A good point,” she concedes. “Even so.”

“I did ask,” he admits. “The King and Queen, and Lord Tully, since we are on his land. I sent word to Lord Reed as well, since he is the nearest we have to a septon, and might know.”

“And?”

“The crown did not approve entirely,” he says cautiously - there is a spy in Sansa’s household, and while they are fairly certain as to who it is they must still be careful. “They thought it might be more fitting for the Stark’s representative to wed in their sept, but she has not kept their gods in many years.”

“Uncle Edmure approved, I see,” Arya says, nodding to where Lord Tully is sweeping Sansa down from her horse with a hearty greeting. “Lord Reed?”

“As I said,” Harrion says. “They are our gods. If not us, then who?”

* * *

Sansa’s hair is loose over her blue-grey gown, her cheeks flushed with sweetwine and laughter, when she takes his hands.

“I will not ask you to dance with me, my love,” she says, “but I do have a question. One that I have been pondering for some time.”

“Oh?” he says, warm with ale and happiness - he even smiles. He has been too conscious of the teeth knocked out in the tender care of the Lannisters, three on the left and just far enough forward that they’re visible most of the time, and usually saves his smiles just for Sansa. “What is that, fair lady?”

She presses the tangle of their hands to her heart. He can feel the warmth and softness of her breast under the back of his wrist, and wishes there was a corner he might drag her around for a proper kiss. A village of tents offers no privacy, and so much family allows even less. 

“I wonder,” she says, “if you had thought much about our departure from the south.”

“A great deal,” he says, dropping one arm around her waist to pull her closer - they are to be married tomorrow, so he defies anyone to deny them this. “But I suspect you mean more specifically than that.”

“Before we are a year married,” she promises him, “I will rescue you from the dirty rain of the Stormlands, and return you to the clean, pure snow of the North.”

She is teasing. From her, he never minds.

* * *

Torr vomits over the side of their little boat, and Harrion laughs. He suspects that he will laugh a great deal today. 

Alys has noticed how giddy he is, and has kept her hand on his back. He misses her terribly, since the end of the War and his departure for Storm’s End to be part of the Northern delegation - to be Sansa’s male counterweight, against the fools who saw her beauty but not the steel at her core. 

They know it now. She leaves nothing to doubt.

“Young King has given orders,” Sigorn says, “for tent in centre of camp for wedding night. Tent has been raised! But other tent has been raised also.”

He’s grinning, his massive arms gleaming with muscle and gold torcs, and the furs thrown idly over his shoulders match the fur lining Alys’ deep hood. They have a good marriage, and Harrion wishes he was a little less aware of that than he is. Still, Sigorn is as fine a goodbrother as Harrion could have hoped for, and this  _ other tent _ of his sounds like it might put off even Torr’s horrible brats of brothers.

Some men have talked about stripping Sansa for the bedding. None of them have talked about it twice.

“I am happy for you, Harry,” Alys says quietly. “So very happy.”

* * *

There are so many trees.

So, so many weirwoods! Harrion hardly knew that so many still lived, but here they are! White as bone and red as blood, brilliant and alive and heavy with the gods’ presence. It settles around Harrion like a mantle, warmer even than Alys’ hand tucked into his. 

“Ah, fuck,” Torr says. “How am I to give Wylla a day to compare to this?”

* * *

The grove at the heart of the Isle of Faces is so quiet that it has a presence. It is so quiet that in the stillness, Harrion can almost hear music. 

Even Torr has nothing to say about it. What could there possibly be to say? Here, where the gods are, here, where there is a peace so absolute that Harrion feels he could sleep here without ever waking, and not regret it.

But then, perhaps he would regret it - in that eternal sleep, would he know Sansa’s presence?

The heart tree here is more a heart tree than any other he has ever seen. Not just vast, tall and spreading and perfectly formed, but with a face more real than any other face on any other heart tree has ever been. It feels, somehow, like the tree all other weirwoods are modelled after.

Harrion stands before it, full of awe, full of hope, as he has not been since before the War. 

Sansa’s hand fits into his. 

Full of love. He is that, too.

They kneel.

* * *

In the quiet, as they pray for the blessings of the gods, something ruffles Harrion’s hair. A breath of wind, like as not, cool from blowing in across the lake, but it feels almost like his father’s hand.

Sansa’s hand tightens in his. What lost farewell did the gods bestow on her? Her mother, he suspects, because even still she cannot bear to consider her father’s death. 

He squeezes back, and rises. And then, once she is standing tall and lovely as the pale lilies that grow sky-blue in the vales around the Karhold, he carefully unwraps the white-and-slate of her father’s House from around her shoulders and replaces it with black-and-silver of his own.

She smiles, radiant as starlight in the night-still tranquillity of this sacred place, and truly, she was born to be a Karstark - she shines just as brilliant and blinding as the sun in winter.


End file.
